


Raaz

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Jodhaa Akbar canon fics [10]
Category: Jodhaa-Akbar (2008)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Oneshot, Post-Canon, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 12:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14693931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Jodhaa must remember never to listen to Madhavi again. Oneshot, post-movie.





	Raaz

Jodhaa must remember _never_ to listen to Madhavi again.

_Why_ did she let Madhavi suggest she and her husband play that particular game of dice, knowing that he knew that the loser must reveal a secret, knowing that her husband is too sharp-minded to ever miss any advantage he can gain over her? Now he sits across the board from her, smirking, just as he did when he knocked her sword out of her hands.

She wonders if Draupadi felt this way when she ate the fruit and had to reveal a secret she had never spoken before.

More to wipe that smirk off his face than anything else, she is ruthlessly cruel in her choice of confession. “That day in the tent, when we first met and I set forth my conditions, I never expected you to agree to them.”

He blinks. She elaborates, “I fully expected you to be furious and to call the wedding off. I couldn’t outright say no to my father when he proposed the alliance, so I decided to be more subtle about getting out of it.”

“But you still married me.” It is both a question and a statement.

Jodhaa shrugs. “I had made a deal, and I had to abide by it.” She remembers how she had crumpled onto the divan after hearing his answer, the shock of disappointment too strong for her body to handle. At the time, being able to keep her faith had been cold comfort to having to live among Mughal barbarians. How she had wept through both weddings, convinced she was about to be defiled in body if not soul… and to think that she had once feared such a thing. She smiles faintly, though not enough that her husband notices -- she is not about to give him such satisfaction, not yet.

“I suppose I owe you a secret as well.” Her husband, always intent on fairness wherever possible. “That day out on the terrace, in the early morning… the first time you saw me with a sword…” he trails off momentarily, and Jodhaa fights back the flush she can feel spreading across her face.

“I fully intended for you to see me.”

Jodhaa stares at him. “Even before I came through the curtain?”

He grins half-cheekily, half-sheepishly. “Why else would I be dressed like that, mere feet away from the women’s palace?”

Jodhaa shakes her head at the depths of her husband’s cunning, even in the early days of their marriage. She is sweeping up the pieces of the game when a warm embrace suddenly engulfs her from behind. “Are you satisfied, now that we have both bared our souls?” his voice rumbles into her neck.

A hundred possible taunts rise up, but they die on her tongue as he tugs her in closer, burying his nose in her hair, and she brings her hands up to clasp his. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title means “secret” in Hindi. Jodhaa refers to the (possibly apocryphal) story of how Draupadi ate a sacred fruit and had to repent by confessing a secret, specifically that she harbored a secret love for Karna.


End file.
